This makes me think...

Posted Jun 3, 2004 23:27 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806)
In reply to: This makes me think... by dvdeug
Parent article: Finding kernel problems automatically

Except that, with a few preprocessor defines to remove the strong-C keywords, you could compile strong-C on a weak-C compiler. The kernel source code could even be a mix of strong and weak C as it transitions to strong-C over the period of a few years. There are very real benefits to simply extending an existing language -- witness C++.

This makes me think...

Posted Jun 4, 2004 10:38 UTC (Fri) by dvdeug (guest, #10998) [Link]

Yes, witness C++. Part of C++'s problem is that it's an incredible pain to parse correctly (notice that GCC ended up completely rewritting the C++ parser to properly support standard C++.) Part of the reason is that C++ was designed based on the already complex C syntax.

Another problem with C++ is that C--especially real world C, but even standard C--and C++ aren't completely compatible either way. Stroustroup had to make a few minor tweaks that lost compatibility to make C++ work right. A strong-C is more than likely going to have a few edge cases where things don't work exactly the same.

To use a few preprocessor defines to remove the strong-C is going to hamstring your efforts; the differences are just not going to be that minimal, and that tightly limits your syntax. What you're asking for is basically the system described in the article, not a new language.